


Swept but Surviving

by TheWaffleBat



Series: Home From All The Ports [4]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Dad!Barnabas, Dad!Herodotus, Family Feels, Father Figures, Father-Daughter Relationship, Gen, Let this sack of meat and sass rest Ubisoft, POV Minor Character, spoilers?, sweet old dads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-17 15:18:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17562965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWaffleBat/pseuds/TheWaffleBat
Summary: “Oh, shush,” Said Herodotus. “With the racket your laugh makes I’m sure she’s tired enough to stay asleep long enough for you to go below deck.” The faint breeze tugged at Kassandra’s hair, and she murmured unhappily when a lock fell into her face. Herodotus pushed it back behind her ear, and Barnabas thought about how Ikaros did the same, preening her hair for her, and couldn’t help another laugh; the both of them were foolish old birds, he thought - too old to fly far from the nest but always there for their chick who did, welcoming her home because she had no one else who would.Two dads, while their daughter rests.





	Swept but Surviving

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Rudyard Kipling's _The North Sea Patrol._

Kassandra had fallen asleep on him, head on his shoulder while she rumbled with snores. Normally Barnabas wouldn’t notice - Kassandra usually fell asleep anywhere that was not her bed, sometimes upright against a wall or the Adrestia’s mast and sometimes collapsing to the floor or sprawling across the benches - and he’d shake her awake with a laugh, send her off to a proper bed, and think no more of it.

But, well, it had been a long time since he’d seen her rest. Between Boeotia and Stentor and coming face to face with Nikolaos again, _and_ having to compete in the Olympics, well. She was feeling awfully bony against his side, all jabbing elbows like spear-heads and collarbones cutting into the meat of his arm like a blade edge; her eyes darkly bruised, muddy and vague and unfocused when she retreated back to the ship to set off for Sparta in the morning. She wasn’t a staggering kind of exhausted, stumbling tired-drunk through the streets, but she was certainly less graceful than she usually was - should have been - and far too careful with how she placed her feet, her normally silent steps too loud.

She wasn’t, Barnabas thought fondly, very good at taking care of herself. She ate like a bear when food was in reach, but otherwise she didn’t seek it out. She slept, but not when she should, at night or even during the day, while keeping to a normal schedule - no, it was wherever and whenever she thought it was safe, usually the Adrestia but sometimes a cave or an abandoned house. Too quick to give her time and attention to people, clearly willing to go to the ends of the earth for her family.

He gently rubbed away some goosebumps risen along her arm, smoothing down the faint hairs and tucking her against him a little more comfortably, because that was what Barnabas was here for. If she chose to ignore her own needs, and her mother and the mysterious father she’d met on Thera failed to notice how she was running herself ragged for them, then Barnabas would do that for her.

He’d always wanted a daughter to take care of, and what better daughter could he have than Kassandra? It was the least he could do.

Herodotus, across the deck, noticed Barnabas watching the waves with Kassandra crushing him beneath her sleeping weight, and came up to them with a small little frown on his face; a faint crease of concern between his brows when he pushed some hair back from Kassandra’s face. Barnabas shook his head at him, smiling to chase away that worry. “Just tired, my friend,” He said, and Herodotus nodded and sat down on Kassandra’s other side, taking her hands in his and rubbing his soft thumb across the back of her hand.

“You could have carried her to her bed,” Said Herodotus mildly, amusement making the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deeper as he watched a few members of the crew disappear below deck to sleep off wine and the hard week’s sailing to Elis. A few, who slept beneath the stars when the weather permitted, gave their captain a few startled glances that faded easily into amusement, and affection, and the kind of loyalty that only came for a leader who was a hard taskmaster but fair even so falling so sweetly vulnerable, like Kassandra’s fierce wolf curled up in a ball of fluff at her feet, snoring as softly as her master.

“What,” Said Barnabas with a laugh, but quiet so he wouldn’t startle Kassandra, “And wake this little kitten? Such cruelty you’ve kept quiet, Herodotus! What other hidden depths are there in you?”

“Oh, shush,” Said Herodotus. “With the racket your laugh makes I’m sure she’s tired enough to stay asleep long enough for you to go below deck.” The faint breeze tugged at Kassandra’s hair, and she murmured unhappily when a lock fell into her face. Herodotus pushed it back behind her ear, and Barnabas thought about how Ikaros did the same, preening her hair for her, and couldn’t help another laugh; the both of them were foolish old birds, he thought - too old to fly far from the nest but always there for their chick who did, welcoming her home because she had no one else who would.

Even her mother was uncomfortable with her; with Kassandra, the creature who grew too powerful outside the shelter of her wings. Had become too estranged from her daughter to recognise the woman she’s become. Barnabas wondered a little at the familiarity she put on, the stilted way Myrrine and Kassandra tried to stitch together a long-broken, perhaps long-dead, bond. Myrrine only saw Kassandra the Eagle-Bearer, the half-myth _misthios_ as great and noble as any griffin, not the woman that Herodotus and Barnabas and the crew got to see, a daughter without a true father who didn’t quite know how to handle two now that they’d decided to be that for her.

Kassandra didn’t know how to ask them for help, for a hug when she wanted it or Barnabas’ stories of his time at sea when she needed the distraction, but she was still theirs, and it was an odd kind of family but when was anything ever normal in life? Family was family, and Barnabas looked to Herodotus, his scholar-soft hands against Kassandra’s warrior’s calluses, and decided that was what they were, damn anyone who disagreed.

Barnabas smiled again, said, “Look at her - I’ve seen less muscle on a lioness! I’d break my back trying to pick her up.” He knew he’d said it after a beat of silence too long, knew that Herodotus had seen the gentle love beating out its rhythm next to his heart when he looked at Kassandra, but he didn’t much care - saw the same love in him, too.

He knew that the both of them were two foolish old men with no children of their own, Herodotus by choice and Barnabas by circumstance, who’d fallen in love with the first parentless waif to cross their paths. That the both of them had decided, neither of them sure when, to take care of her in whatever way she asked them to, whether it was tearing across Poseidon’s sea to smash hulls with a cultist or to let her sleep heavy on their shoulders, jammed uncomfortably into Barnabas’ flank though he wouldn’t move for Zeus himself in case she woke.

Whatever her birth family became, no matter who her father turned out to be, that mysterious man on Thera that Kassandra didn’t want to talk about, he and Herodotus were her parents in all the ways that mattered; what was a little difference in blood against that?

**Author's Note:**

> Just a short little thing because I have far too much love two of the most minor characters in the game _they're so cute_.


End file.
